Sweetheart Of The Song Tra Bong Character Analysis

Throughout the novel O'Brien shows the audience the functionality of his platoon through describing their life stories. Each character is changed due to their time in the war. Some lose their innocence along with their ability to cope like Norman Bowker, or Mary Anne. Some are like Time O’Brien; while he was changed in Vietnam, he found a way to continue living. O'Brien tries to show the conflict of war while telling us how it changes people. These three characters represent the effects of Vietnam and how they lost their innocence. Norman Bowker survived the war and went home to restart his normal life again. Upon arrival he realized the world continued on without him. He was stuck driving around the lake lacking purpose. He wrote Tim explaining
She was a beautiful young girl who came to Vietnam because of her love for a soldier. While living on base, Mary Anne was fascinated by the war. At first she just wanted to learn more about it. She wanted to be hands on when it came to helping wounded soldiers. For awhile she begged them to take her to the local village. In finally agreeing, she played for hours with the children, even swimming in a pond. She was naive in ignoring the war around her. Her youthfulness clouded the danger of Vietnam. Over the course of her stay, she started to change. She turned into a creature of Vietnam. She went on ambushes killing people and then cutting off their tongues to wear them as a necklace. Being in Vietnam broke her innocence in the sense that without boot camp she became a soldier with no fear and nothing to stop her. She completely lost all her innocence the moment she became involved in the war. Her fascination became an obsession. She left her old life and was smothered by Vietnam becoming someone else entirely. When she was sent home i believe that she could never return to that life she previously had. She adapted to was and it gave her a high she could never have
The chapter “The man I killed,” O'Brien retells his encounter with a man he swears he killed. Throughout the time O'Brien was in the war he was involved in several conflicts, but the death of this one man in particular killed his innocence. He sat for a long time just taking in what happened. Stunned by the dead man in front of him. O'Brien did not want to participate in the was and when he killed the man he didn't understand why. The man did not attack first. That moment he took another life, O`Brien lost his innocence of war. Since he was able to come home and pick back up his life where he left it, O'Brien was able to move on. Unlike Bowker, O'Brien had a life at college to return to. He had a purpose and for that he was not forever lost in